Just a heads up. If you have sent me an email in the last two weeks or so two things probably happened. First, you might have gotten a message that returned your email telling you the message was not delivered. Secondly, I didn’t get the message! That problem has now been corrected. I always enjoy hearing your comments and perspective. Please stay in touch.
Wednesday – Day 7
Ready for the second half of our European adventure in France?
Today we begin the second half of our European adventure. In a way, the second half is nearly a mirror reflection of the first half of the trip.
The first six days of the trip involved a day of international travel, then two separate hotel stays, and finally three nights in the same hotel in El Vendrell, Spain.
Use it or lose the opportunity to use it!
I know! I’ve mentioned this before. As we make our way through this trip, I will routinely refer to what I am trying to practice from the financial and life strategy book, Die with Zero, written by Bill Perkins.
In a sentence or two this plan says don’t work hard for your money, invest it and save it…and then not use it. Take some of those funds and spend them on yourself, your loved ones, or others. Use what you earned to enjoy your life…unless you think checking your account balances every day IS your life’s enjoyment. If that’s how you feel I can’t help you and probably nobody can. As an example, when it comes to travel some may want to take lots of trips, some may think first class seats on a jumbo jet is where it’s at or the best penthouse suite is even better…or whatever. Just use what you earned for your enjoyment (meaning you, your loved ones, or others). Use it while you’re on this earth!
This is our ‘classic’ trip.
The second half of the trip begins with three days in Marseille, France. We’ll follow that with two separate hotel stays, and a day of international travel to get us back home. That’s the layout of a classic international trackchasing trip. Travel one day. Stay 10 days. Travel one day. Carol has signed on for three of these international trips. I’ll take 8-10 of varying durations outside the U.S.
The weather on this trip has been perfect. High temperatures from 75-80°. Low temps around 70. No rain at all. The weather forecast for the second half of the trip is expected to be the same as our first six days in Europe. We do seem to hit some temperature extremes from time to time with other trips. Earlier this year Japan was exhaustingly hot and humid. A couple of years ago, we were trackchasing up in the mountains of France (above Isola, France) and Italy in the middle of the winter. That’s ice racing…when hot chocolate is your friend!
I continue to get in my 4 miles of daily walking and more. I did miss one day when I screwed up the time zone differences between Europe and California. After completing 365 straight days of walking more than four miles I am not nearly as anal about this now. Still anal…just not as anal. If I miss a day, it’s not the end of the world, but I do plan to walk 4 miles or more every day.
Location, location, location.
From our hotel in Spain, we had a five-hour drive up to Marseille, France. I chose seafront hotels for the middle six days of the journey. The two hotel stays on either end of those seafront stays, would be at hotels coming or going to the racetracks we planned to visit. I never forget it is the racetrack locations that bring us to these locales. Then it is the locales themselves that provide the entertainment and adventure. We’re out here for the entertainment and adventure and if we can get it, drama. The tracks will literally end up taking us everywhere. Once we get to “everywhere” it’s on us to make it a fun trip. That’s easy to do.
Does Europe have ‘cheap’ gas?
Today on our drive out of Spain we stopped to get some of Europe’s “cheap” gas. In Spain, we paid only $7.44 a gallon. This was the third time we have stopped for gas on the trip. Previously in France, we paid $8.09 a gallon. We did see gasoline prices along the toll roads where 95-octane gasoline in France was selling for $9.50 a gallon. Remember when gas first went over a dollar in the U.S.? That happened in 1980…the year we had a 17.5% home mortgage. Were those the “good old days”?
Pay the toll or pay the gas station?
For the most part toll roads were not an issue in Spain. However, toll roads in France are everywhere. We chose the toll road option today with Google Maps. Our drive time was expected to be nearly six hours. Had we bypassed the toll roads the drive would have been closer to eight hours. Toll roads are expensive but some of that expense is offset when the toll road driving distance is less saving us gas expenses.
There is a tremendous amount of truck traffic on the toll roads. The good thing is that the trucks are not allowed to drive in the fast lane(s). Nevertheless, truck driving speeds are dramatically slower in most cases than what the cars are traveling.
Get out of the friggin’ fast lane and don’t come back unless you are going to pass somebody.
I think European drivers are much better drivers than Americans. Nobody “parks” in the fast lane on a European highway like you commonly experience in the states. If you are not passing somebody you need to be in the far right slowest lane here. If you are in any lane, not driving fast enough, and not passing anyone, the driver behind you will come up and turn on his or her left turn signal. This is the universal signal that you are not in the lane you are supposed to be in. You need to get all the way to the right…now. C’mon, man. The question is simple. Are you passing someone? Yes or no? If you’re not get way over to the right until you ARE going to pass someone.
I can’t wait to get back to America and come up upon someone in the fast lane doing 55 miles an hour when the speed limit is 70. Then when I tailgate them, they move over to a slower lane and immediately increase their speed from 55 to 70. Then they look over at me as if to say, “why were you tailgating ME? I’m driving the speed limit!” I have long felt drivers going slower than me are idiots and those driving faster are morons.
It’s Apply Pay all the way for me.
Just about everywhere I use the tap feature with my Apple Watch to pay by credit card. On some occasions, I will use the tap feature on my iPhone. Even tapping with my phone is so old school! Today Carol and I stopped at a convenience store to pick up a couple of items. Tapping with my Apple Watch would not work. Next, I went with the iPhone tap. That didn’t work either. Finally, I resorted to the credit card that was tied to both my phone and my watch and tapped it. Tapping the physical credit card worked! The cashier couldn’t explain it. What about cash? Oh my. Did you say cash? That is so horse and buggy. I think we could just about get through one of these trips without using any cash at all.
Thursday – Day 8
Hey! We’re on vacation!
Today was an unusual day of sorts. We couldn’t quite get rolling by 10:30 a.m. to enjoy the hotel’s buffet breakfast. That’s not a problem. We are on vacation! That’s what I tell Carol if she frets about missing breakfast. To her “breakfast” is a couple of pieces of fruit, a few lettuce leaves, and a cup of coffee. That’s breakfast for her. I’m not in that camp.
Just getting to our hotel in a big foreign city, was daunting.
Last night when we were driving into Marseille, France to our downtown hotel location the traffic was thick. Driving in Marseille is like navigating a huge video game with all kinds of pedestrians, people on electric scooters, motorcycles and cars darting in and out in just about every correction. My hand was on constantly on the gearshift and my foot was on the clutch. The streets were not well marked or marked at all. This required my full attention.
When I knew we were just a couple of blocks from the hotel, even though I hadn’t seen the hotel yet, I noticed what looked like an underground parking garage. My motto is when you see parking in Marseille take it! Each underground parking garage has its own unique name. Ours was named, appropriately, Charles de Gaulle. We parked in the garage and walked a block and a half to the hotel with our bags. This way we could get ourselves checked in and not have to drag bags very far in the wrong direction.
I must tell you one of my biggest failings in life is trying to park within the lines in a parking lot…of any size. Normally, I don’t have an excuse. However, on this trip, our Renault Captur rental car did NOT have a backup camera. In 2023 who ever heard of that? The photo shows my first attempt. With Carol’s prompting, I improved the results enough to gain a satisfactory rating from her.
Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.
Our seafront suite at the Le Meridien Hotel in El Vendrell, Spain for the past few days was top of the line. Despite it being somewhat expensive, I think it was worth four times what we paid.
Our stay in Marseille, France would be more expensive than what we paid in Spain, but in my judgment worth only half of what we ended up paying. That’s how it goes sometimes. Some choices are major successes and some not so much.
I could not believe my eyes!
During last night’s drive, just before we reached our hotel, I saw something that I would never have expected to see in France. What was that? A Steak ‘n Shake restaurant! A Steak ‘n Shake in France! Of course, it is common to see U.S. restaurant brands all over the world but not Steak ‘n Shake. In all of my world travels I have never seen one outside the U.S. As far as I know, there are no Steak ‘n Shakes stores in California.
Steak ‘n Shake was founded in Normal, Illinois in 1934. As a boy, we had a Steak ‘n Shake in my hometown of East Peoria, Illinois. Being a 10-year-old, it was a very special treat once in a while after church on Sunday for the family to have lunch at Steak ‘n Shake. I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to guess that each of those Sunday meals probably cost less than a dollar back in the day. Last week I paid more than sixteen dollars for just my lunch at a Subway restaurant. Fifty years from now will a Subway sandwich cost $1,000?
As a high schooler, our Steak ‘n Shake was popular because they had “curbies”. Do you know what a curbie is?
Customers at the restaurant would pull into the parking lot, park, and stay in their cars. One of the Steak ‘n Shake employees would run out to your car and put a small placard underneath your windshield wiper. The placard had a number on it. The employee, the curbie, would take your order, and when it was ready, come running back out to your car and place the tray on your side window that was rolled up about four inches. Rolled up? Yes, that was a term we used before power windows came about. When we were finished eating, we simply flashed our headlights. The curbie came running back to the car at a full sprint and took the tray away. Those were the days, weren’t they? Now all of that has been replaced by the drive-thru. Of course, everyone reading knows that In-N-Out Burgers invented the drive-thru lane!
The Old Port of Marseille.
Our hotel in Marseille was located at the Old Port of Marseille port. This port is the oldest in Europe. It opened in the 6th century BC!! The port is the most popular location in the city. Marseille is the oldest city in France. Everything seemed to revolve around the port. By the way, that’s our hotel in the bottom photo behind the boat on the right.
Why did we pick Marseille for a three-night stay? Marseille was somewhat midway between where we had just been in El Vendrell, Spain, and next Saturday’s racetrack in Mazan, France. Plus, it was a city located on the water. That’s it. We have already visited the main cities of Europe, often several times. I feel we could just about throw a dart on a map of Europe and go there and have a good time.
So. What to do for fun?
What would we do to entertain ourselves? Last night we ran into a couple of American tourists sitting in the hotel lobby. They told us about a boat cruise they had taken that day. That sounded like fun. We always seem to take a boat ride when we travel even though we have never owned a boat. We bought a couple of tickets for the Calanques National Park tour. The 2 ½-hour cruise took us out to the park and back. The weather was perfect. We enjoyed the opportunity for some fresh air, beautiful scenery, and just a kickback afternoon.
Food? So. So.
I wouldn’t say the food was the best we’ve eaten on trips like this. I tried to use Yelp. We took recommendations from locals. We just haven’t had any over-the-top meals. We did have time to pick up some gifts for family and friends. Our choices were special. Folks who get these gifts are going to love them.
What did you bring me?
As a boy, my family didn’t travel overnight very often. When they did, I was one of those kids who would immediately say, “What did you bring me” before they had time to take their coats off. They always had a special surprise waiting for me in their suitcase.
Today I commonly tell people that I have averaged taking three flights a week, every week since I was twenty-three. That sounds like a stretch but I don’t think it is. I did get off to a slow start. I didn’t fly on my first plane until I was twenty-one. I can only remember taking one overnight vacation through high school. That was a bus trip from home to Evansville, Indiana. This was supplemented by a once-a-year bowling tournament with my grandparents in Chicago. We always rode the “Rocket”(above) a train from Peoria to Chicago. Maybe in my adulthood, I’m trying to make up for that childhood outage. Prolly.
Steak ‘n Shake…I couldn’t miss it.
Other than our boat trip today was not a huge day of touring. I dig drag Carol up the street for lunch at Steak ‘n Shake. How could I not? Steak ‘n Shake is not doing well business-wise in the U.S. Apparently, that is the case in France as well. I soon made friends were our server. He told me the location we were visiting was scheduled to close at the end of the month. The culinary gods were smiling at me to get my Steak ‘n Shake chance in France!
Not my car.
Our hotel clerk told us that the underground parking garage that we used was not exactly safe for automobiles. She told us that it was safe for people. That seemed like an odd explanation. She recommended we move our car about two blocks to a better, safer parking garage. However, the vehicular traffic was so congested with pedestrians, scooter people, motorcycles, and the like I figured I would just take my chances in the first parking garage that we selected. It wasn’t my car, right?
I must admit that I will question the “logic” of advice that some people give me. The parking garage was unsafe for cars but safe for people? What data did this person have to support that conclusion? I figured the garage was either unsafe for both cars and people or safe for both. I didn’t think people bent on criminal activity would be so discerning. Nevertheless, I did keep a lookout over my shoulder when we walked in that area.
Friday – Day 9
Today is our final day of official touring. For the upcoming weekend, Saturday and Sunday, we will be trackchasing from one track to the other on our way back to Paris. Once in Paris, we would fly home on Monday.
We began the morning with a stop at the Marseille fish market. Then we hopped on the “Little Tourist Train of Marseille”. The trains travel on two different circuits. The cost to ride is nine euros for the one-hour and five-minute loop. We chose the “Notre Dame de la Garde” circuit. This is what the train website says about this choice. “It must be said that the train climbs pretty high and that the idea of climbing the Chemin de Croix in the middle of summer does not appeal to everyone. A circuit includes not only a stop at La Bonne Mère, but also passes through the Corniche Kennedy to admire Vallon des Auffes, the Friuli Islands and Château d’If. From April to October, departures take place every 20 minutes from 10am to 12:20pm and from 1:40pm to 6:20pm. From November to March, departures take place every 40 minutes or every hour and a half depending on the number of people, from 10am to 12pm and from 2pm to 4pm.”
The #1 attraction in Marseille, France.
We saved today for the #1 tourist attraction in all of Marseille. That would be the Basilica of our Lady of the Guard, commonly referred to by the French as Bonne Mere which is French for “The Good Mother”. This is the most visited site in all of Marseille by a wide margin. This is a huge place and the landmark can be seen during the day or night. If you go to Marseille it’s a must-see. And yes my feet are big but not THAT big.
Give me an Egg McMuffin.
I must say I am really getting tired of lavish hotel buffet breakfasts. I’d rather have an egg McMuffin at McDonald’s. These buffets are invitations to gain weight. Normally, I am more than willing to accept an invitation of this type. But enough is enough.
I read about someone who was trying to practice the Die with Zero lifestyle as regards food. This fellow wanted to upgrade his restaurant choices. He wanted to buy better quality foods in the grocery store. He just wanted to see if he could increase his enjoyment of life by putting more time and money into what he ate. The plan was to do this for every meal. After a few months, he concluded that eating gourmet meals at every outing and buying the most expensive foods in the grocery store just couldn’t increase his overall enjoyment of life. Eating and buying super expensive and exclusive food day in and day out wasn’t doing it for him. That made all the sense to me.
Speaking of food, we had lunch at the cathedral. It was overpriced and not to my liking. And yes that was a terrible beer-pouring effort. Following the visit to the cathedral, we would just kick back and relax for the balance of the afternoon. I had already walked more than 5 miles so just taking it easy seemed like a really good idea.
I learned a lesson for the future.
It’s been a nice advantage to have our hotel room overlooking the Port of Marseille. There’s a lot of action in the area as well as tons of restaurants all within easy walking distance. I had asked for a water-view room. However, I did have to make a mental note for next time. A water view on the first floor, which is one floor above street level is not as good as a water view from the fifth floor of a five-story hotel. We checked in later in the evening and the only junior suite water view room was on the first floor. Lesson learned.
I was surprised to learn that the “Rugby World Cup” was being held during our stay in France. The games were played in a series of stadiums in and around Marseilles. That would have been fun to attend but there were no matches in Marseilles during our visit.
The Waffle Factory? Yes!
Sometimes when we are traveling the idea of getting ready and trying to enjoy a two-hour-plus gourmet dinner isn’t what we are looking for. Believe it or not, for dinner, we stopped at a place called the “Waffle Factory”. A restaurant with a name like that is right in my wheelhouse! Carol is very accommodating. She wouldn’t walk into a place called the “Waffle Factory” ever in her daily life.
What was the specialty at the Waffle Factory? French waffles…with all kinds of toppings. They wanted us to order using electronic kiosks. However, my order was so “customized” that the kiosk had a hard time keeping up. O.K., maybe I had a hard time keeping up with a French kiosk. Finally, we bagged the kiosk and placed an order with a real human Waffle Factory employee. I know that is so horse and buggy just like using cash!
My waffle came with all kinds of ice cream and other sweet toppings. Carol was a bit out of her element. No lettuce leaves in a place like this. Of course, the Waffle Factory offered a combo meal. What makes up a combo meal at the Waffle Factor? No, not French fries although we were in France. By the way, we ate French fries several times in France and they were never very good.
What makes up a Waffle Factory combo meal? Genius!
The combo meal with the waffle smothered in sweet calories came with a…wait for it…a milkshake. The person who started the Waffle Factory from scratch must have been a frigging genius. When everyone was sitting in a conference room trying to come up with that combo side offering for the waffle somebody piped up with “Let’s make the combo choice a milkshake!” I hope that person got promoted on the spot. Tonight, I chose the salted caramel milkshake. Carol recoiled at my selections. I think she went with a cappuccino. Maybe there is a reason I have never once, in 51 years of marriage, heard her say she ever needed to lose a single pound.
Tomorrow, Saturday, we begin our trek northward toward Paris. We will get there Sunday night after we go trackchasing at a couple of different racing locations in France on the route to Paris.
Saturday – Day 10.
Could we get out of the underground parking garage safely?
Our major activity this morning was simply getting out of our underground parking garage. The spiral exit ramp was narrow. It seemed even narrower when I reminded myself that I was driving a rental car with a stick shift uphill and making 360-degree turns. I didn’t need any rental car damage. Carol and I were rear-ended on a trip to Cannes, France years ago. That was a paperwork hassle.
Getting out of Marseille from the port area was difficult. Narrow streets, lots of pedestrians, and people on scooters and motorcycles and super narrow streets made for an E-ticket ride (you may need to Google that reference). All of this required a good deal of concentration. I was more than happy to see the outskirts of the city.
Ventous Auto-Cross – Mazan, France – Dirt autocross road course. – Lifetime track #2,921.
Time to trackchase.
This afternoon we would be attending our second dirt autocross event featuring France’s version of sprint cars.
None of these places are exactly easy to find. For the most part, they’re out in the country. It always seemed as if our GPS could get us close but from that point, we had to look for signposts. Luckily the track was well signposted. Today’s admission was a reasonable €10 per person.
We are always treated well no matter where we travel.
Many of these tracks take a lunch break from noon until 1:30 p.m. or so. We arrived just in time for lunch. It’s always interesting to see how difficult the translation is going to be when ordering lunch or asking for directions. Carol thinks that people in France speak much more English than they used to. That’s probably true. As in every country we visit, the people go out of their way to help us. As I’ve mentioned a time or two, we just don’t see or hear virtually any people visiting from the United States.
It’s never good to project negative future outcomes.
It was a little bit of a hassle walking around the paddock area today. There were lots of big rocks, which made navigation tough and slow. I did find a place where we could spectate from an elevated location. This would require us to ascend the side of a dirt hill best suited for mountain goats. Carol didn’t think she could make it. I told her she could…and she did. When we reached the top, I congratulated her. My congratulations were met with an icy stare and the voiced concern that going down was going to be even more treacherous. It was all I could do to remind her for the one-thousandth time that it is “never good to project negative future outcomes”. I’ve gotten my share of icy stares with that comment although, to me, it seems to make all the sense in the world!
Racing is a family sport.
We were able to find some of the very best viewing areas for today’s estimated three-quarter-mile permanent dirt road course. They had well over 100 cars racing today. This was a two-day show. Most of the race teams brought their campers along with their racing equipment. I would love to have been there this evening to see what went on. It would be party time…in French. Racing in most places, especially at the local level, is a great family sport. Everyone seems to look out for each other.
Back on the toll road.
When we had seen all the dirt autocross racing that we thought we needed to see, we headed on out and up the toll road toward Macon, France. I’m pretty sure I have never been to a country that has more toll roads than France. They are relatively expensive as well. I guess we’ll end up spending $200 or so on tolls alone. Of course, we do have the option of taking toll-free roads. The drawback to that is that a four-hour ride on the toll road will take six hours or more where tolls are not charged. We’re spending about eight dollars a gallon for gasoline. If we drive very far out of our way, the cost of gas nullifies whatever savings we might generate from the toll-free roads.
Tonight, we were staying at a hotel in Mâcon, France. I had never heard of this small city. Why were we staying here? Our hotel was just three hours up the road from today’s racing in Mazan. Then for tomorrow, it would be another two-hour drive to Magny-Cours where we would wrap up the trackchasing portion of our trip. Selecting Mâcon was a simple process once I knew where the racetracks were located.
Since we’ve been to Paris so often, the main objective of the touring portion of this trip was to visit other parts of France and Spain. I like the idea of throwing a dart at a map of France, which wasn’t exactly what we did, and just seeing what we could see.
As quaint as quaint can be!
Tonight, we were staying at the Hotel Best Western Plus Hotel d’Europe et d’Angleterre. I know what some folks might be saying. “Randy, not another Best Western! This is France. Stay in a local hotel!”. My response? Don’t be fooled by the name ‘Best Western’. This was an authentic old-line French Hotel. It somehow got matched up as a franchisee for Best Western. Earlier in the trip we stayed in another Best Western in France. These properties couldn’t be any further apart from the stereotypical Best Western hotel that you might be imagining.
I’ve been a little disappointed in our food choices on this trip. That’s totally on me. We have just had different circumstances come up on most nights where having a fine dining experience in France or Spain couldn’t be part of our plan.
Maybe our best meal of the trip…and we didn’t get Covid.
Tonight, we would atone for that just a little bit. On the recommendation of the desk clerk, we walked a few blocks outside of our hotel to a restaurant. Mâcon was a small town with lots of narrow winding streets which is exactly what I would expect and prefer when traveling in Europe. This was a small quaint little place that served good Italian food. Unfortunately, our server acted as if he had severe Covid and maybe he did. To add to that spectacle, he didn’t speak English. Anyway, it was a good meal.
I walked Carol back to the hotel and then I went off walking myself so I could knock out my 4 miles of walking for the day. During my walk, I was able to see even more of the background of this little off-the-beaten-path French town.
We’ve got one more trackchasing day planned for tomorrow. Then following those races, we will head back up to Paris. We fly home on Monday. All of our logistical plans, except tomorrow night’s hotel, have worked out just as they were drawn on the drawing board. That seldom happens?
No AC? No reservation.
What’s the problem with tomorrow’s hotel? They sent a message saying their air-conditioning had broken down. That being the case I canceled our reservation and found a substitute.
Sunday – Day 11.
In the racing world, race venues can be divided into two general groups. You have the smaller, local ma and pa-type racing venues that commonly have dirt racing surfaces. Then there are the much more well-known permanent asphalt road courses like Watkins, Glenn, Laguna Seca, Le Mans, and many others.
They say that the small dirt tracks are for the “beer and pretzel” set. Then the bigger racing venues attract the “wine and cheese” participants and fans. Although those are generalities, I think there’s probably quite a bit of truth to those descriptions.
Yesterday we saw the more informal dirt track racing, which they commonly call autocross in Europe. Today we were headed to a much more well-known racing venue, Circuit Nevers Magny Cours.
Magny Cours has a stellar history of racing in France. The place was built in 1960. It fell into disrepair in the 1980s. This is common with high-profile motor racing tracks. Someone builds a magnificent showcase of a racing plant spending top dollar to do it. Then they can’t make a financial go of things and the track closes or the first owner sells for pennies on the dollar. The new buyer then gets a state-of-the-art facility at a great price and can now operate the track at a profit. Most of the huge sports stadiums you see for mainstream sports get lots of financial aid from the government. Auto racing facilities rarely get money from the government to build their race venues.
From disrepair to the World Formula 1 Grand Prix. That’s right. From 1991-2008 Circuit Nevers Magny Cours hosted the French Grand Prix. World Formula 1 normally has only one race in each country they visit on their 20-race season schedule. I’ve seen F1 racing in India and Singapore with Carol. I’ve also been to those big F1 races by myself in South Korea, Miami and Las Vegas as well as the F1 historic races in Monaco with Carol. F1 is a spectacle and an event wherever they show up much like the Indy 500 and the Daytona 500.
Today the track was hosting a “historic formula” racing day. Historic racing is where owners and drivers bring out cars that have raced over the past 50-60 years and sometimes even longer. For the true automobile lover and race fan this is a chance to see all of these cars from different eras race on the same day.
Magny Cours has a seating capacity of more than 139,000. They probably packed the place during their F1 years. Race properties like this have all kinds of activity throughout their season. Other than the really big groups like F1 the others draw very small crowds. Today’s attendance might have been 3,000 people plus or minus. For us, that was good.
If you ever want to go to one of these really popular tracks and see everything there is to see I recommend you go on one of their racing weekends where a less popular formula will be competing. Why?
Let’s imagine that you wanted to see all the ins and outs of Yankee Stadium or maybe Lambeau Field in Green Bay. I wouldn’t recommend trying to do that on the day they were playing the World Series or Super Bowl at one of those venues.
The same is true with auto racing. Let’s say you want to go to Watkins Glenn in New York. I’d strongly recommend that you check it out on a weekend when they are having some amateur series that draws fairly small crowds. When you do that, you can usually go into every nook and cranny, including the VIP spectator suites, all areas of the paddock, and more. I did that once down in Austin, Texas, to check out the Circuit of the Americas newly built racing plant. I saw everything. Formula One and NASCAR’s biggest series race at Circuit of the Americas. The casual fan would never be able to see behind every door on one of those popular weekends.
Today was a beautiful weather day. Carol and I walked around the paddock area and into the paddock garages to our heart’s content. Then we went up into the massive grandstands and joined the crowd of about 200 people to watch the racing.
The Grand Prix course at the Magny Cours circuit was 4.4 kilometers and included 17 turns. A good lap time around the track would be a minute and twenty seconds. None of that mattered to us. We had a nice seat in the grandstand to see the cars leave the starting grid. Soon they were out of sight and didn’t come back into our view all that often or for all that long. Road-course racing at tracks like this is normally about the “spectacle” more than the racing for the spectator. It’s about the ambience of the event. From any one single position, the fan can only see a very small percentage of the entire track. That was the situation today. That didn’t matter to us. We were here for the spectacle!
When we had seen all of the “spectacle” we needed to see it was time to head up the road toward the Orly airport in Paris. Now the main focus was to get back to our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente, California. San Clemente is a good distance from the Orly airport!
I was a little concerned that traffic coming back into Paris on a Sunday night after a weekend would be heavy and slow. It was. It was so heavy and slow that Google Maps directed us off of the tollway onto some country roads.
It was getting later in the afternoon and we were getting hungry for dinner. I’ve always found that when I travel in a foreign country, especially with a strong foreign language, and not many signs in English, it’s really hard to “see” what you’re looking for. Things just don’t jump out as if you were in your native country. I was once in the country of Georgia. Their food specialty, which I love is khinkali. I saw what looked like a khinkali restaurant. I walked in. The place was a nail salon! Trust me. This isn’t like driving down the main drag in your hometown where you can recognize multiple restaurants from a mile away.
We were now driving through little villages where the roads weren’t much wider than the width of two cars. The buildings had to be hundreds of years old on either side.
I checked Yelp. I was hoping that I might be able to get a recommendation there. They work quite a few Yelp recommendations, considering we were in rural France but none of those places was open on a Sunday afternoon/evening.
It is with some chagrin that I must tell you we stopped at Burger King. BK was the ONLY place open. Folks, if I were driving in the United States, it would be a rare circumstance if ever, that I would stop at a Burger King. However, this might tell you what a restaurant wasteland on a Sunday afternoon we were in. Our meal at BK was edible and slightly better than expected.
It was time to fill up the Hertz Rental Car Racing Renault Captur with gas for the final time. Here are the stats our rental car gave us.
In ten days, we drove 1,828 miles. We paid $385 U.S. for fuel. Our average cost per gallon was $8.02 U.S. The car gave us 38.92 MPG. Of course, all of these numbers were translated from kilometers, euros, and liters! I wasn’t all that impressed with our fuel mileage considering we used a manual transmission.
For the evening we ended up staying at an Ibis Styles airport hotel at Orly. At the last minute, I switched to this place after our originally reserved hotel told us that their air-conditioning wasn’t working.
Our room was small but it was clean. We just needed to repack everything and get ready for our departure back towards Southern California tomorrow.
Well, Carol tidied up her belongings. I went outside and walked a couple of miles to meet my daily goal. The hotel was near a train station. it was fun to see people coming and going later on a Sunday evening. The weather for the entire trip was perfect. Other than a few light sprinkles when we picked up our car in Paris on our first day here, we didn’t have any rain whatsoever.
Monday – Day 12
The first thing on the day’s agenda was returning our rental car. Whenever I rent a car, which I do more than 50 times a year, I try to practice the same driving instructions that I gave our kids when they were teenagers. What instruction was that? “Don’t hit anything”! How can you go wrong if you follow advice like that?
It looked as if the guy ahead of me who was returning his rental car was getting “dinged” by a more stringent than he needed to be Hertz Rental Car employee. As I watched this transaction, I had to subtly move into “Randy, hyper mode” My hyper-mode would handle this situation when it came our turn to close out our contract.
Folks my background is Sales. I was trained and learned on the job that it’s important to get along with people who have your future in their hands. There are lots of ways to do that but sugar is going to be more effective than salt in almost every situation.
When it came our turn to meet with the Hertz Rental Car guy I opened up our interaction this way. I told him I thought he had a tough job. He must go home really tired every night. He smiled. I think he just wanted to hear someone commiserate with his side of the situation.
Just to be clear I might point out this out. It’s important to say nice things to people. Secondly and this is equally important. Everything that is said needs to be sincere and honest. When you take a moment to think about it, it doesn’t take all that much effort or creativity to come up with something positive to say to just about everyone that you meet.
Soon the rental car guy and I were slapping each other on the back just as if we hadn’t seen each other since the last homecoming game back in high school. The guy gave a brief glance over our car. He gave the OK to our contract and off we went. Mission accomplished.
Fly home on French Bee Airlines worked out just fine. We have used several discount carriers for our nonstop trips from California to Europe and other places. They’ve all worked out well. Carol and I can fly quite comfortably in coach over long distances.
I would classify this trip as a major success. When you hear me say that you might want to remember that I make about 40 of these trips a year. Maybe eight or 10 of which are to foreign countries. I’ve done that for more than 20 years in retirement. You can do the math on that one.
I’m such a laid-back person. As I look back on every one of those trips I can’t recall making a single effort that I didn’t enjoy. I don’t think I have ever had a trip that I would classify as anything approaching a failure.
For this adventure, we met our trackchasing objectives just as planned. We added four new tracks in France to our lifetime totals.
We were able to practice the “Die with Zero” financial and life planning strategies that I’ve been working on. Everyone has a different idea of what it takes to make themselves, their loved ones or others happier when it comes to spending money. For traveling some people might want to put more money into air travel, hotels, touring, and the like. Truth be told we could have upgraded ourselves in all categories for this trip. I guess all of those upgrades would have increased our personal enjoyment. However, the only upgrade that seemed to be a good value from our perspective was staying in better hotel rooms. For every night but the last we stayed in junior suites, full suites, and in rooms that had great views often of the water. We enjoyed the extra space and the luxury. At the same time, we didn’t think upgrading our airline seats or rental car was worth it.
Some folks will say it’s not worth upgrading anything. They won’t make any of those upgrades or even take the trips to begin with. Their money will grow and grow in an investment account. At the same time, these people will grow older and older. They will become less able to take any trips until they really can’t physically take any trips. Much of the money they worked so hard to get will never really be available to them to use themselves. They will quietly observe that at least others will get to use their money. As you can see, I’m not in that camp. We’re going to enjoy the money we earned and invested now. There will be plenty left over when we take the final checkered flag.
I just know this. This is true for me and there’s a good chance it is true for you. If you had good employment, saved and invested your money properly, and retired at an early age, you probably have more money than you’ll ever come close to spending.
I would ask everyone reading this to try to answer the question for themselves. What exactly do you plan on doing with the money you have based on your current lifestyle, your health, your age, and your capability of enjoying the funds that you have invested? Once you come up with a good answer to that question I hope you take some time to act on your conclusions.
That’s it from France. I have now seen racing in 86 countries at 2,923 race tracks. Believe it or not, I have some very specific plans to see racing in country #87 in the very near future. If that works out, I’ll tell you all about it.
Oh yeah, I working on buying a new car. The old one was getting dirty and I didn’t feel like washing it. I won’t be using the “Randy Lewis New Car Buying Method”. I still believe in that approach but it is not well suited for the new car I expect to buy. I wish it was! I can’t believe all of the details that have to be explored and managed. If it all works out I’ll be telling you about that transaction…around Christmas time.